Excellent. "Free software" works just fine. Brand flipping is a loss. It gains no new adherents and confuses the people drifting at the edges who you might have mobilized. It would be foolish to dropping the term "free software" because the bullies have mounted a propaganda campaign against it. The term "freeware" is fading away with Windows.
The "Free World" was very well defined by cold war rhetoric. The non free world was governed by centralized autocracies that treated people like wear parts. People fought and died for the kinds of freedom defined in the US Bill of Rights. Non free software is giving us a world nastier than East Germany. You don't want to lose resonance with that, regardless of how disgracefully the free world countries may have behaved lately. The principles are something we should all stand on. In English speaking countries, this still carries weight. Libre is a fine term. It calls to mind all sorts of good things. On Tuesday 17 March 2015, rysiek wrote: > I have a different take on this: we either stand our ground and fight for > our language, or we *will* get pushed off of the next term, and the next, > and the next. > > Look what's happening with "open". Openwashing is a huge problem. We can > move to "libre", but sooner or later the very same dynamic will take over. > At some point we *will* have to make a stand. > > So we might as well make a stand here, with "free software".
